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arXiv:2504.20533 · Physical Review A

Error bounds for the Floquet-Magnus expansion and their application to the semiclassical quantum Rabi model

Anirban Dey, Davide Lonigro, Kazuya Yuasa, Daniel Klaus Burgarth

Published Nov 24, 2025• 4 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We present a general, nonperturbative method for deriving effective Hamiltonians of arbitrary order for periodically driven systems based on an iterated integration-by-parts technique. The resulting family of effective Hamiltonians reproduces the well-known Floquet-Magnus expansion, now enhanced with explicit error bounds that quantify the distance between the exact and approximate dynamics at each order, even in cases where the Floquet-Magnus series fails to converge. We apply the method to the semiclassical Rabi model and provide explicit error bounds for both the Bloch-Siegert Hamiltonian and its third-order refinement. Our analysis shows that, while the rotating-wave approximation more accurately captures the true dynamics than the Bloch-Siegert Hamiltonian in most regimes, the third-order approximation ultimately outperforms both.

DOI
10.1103/6bgj-s987

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We present a general, nonperturbative method for deriving effective Hamiltonians of arbitrary order for periodically driven systems based on an iterated integration-by-parts technique. The resulting family of effective Hamiltonians reproduces the well-known Floquet-Magnus expansion, now enhanced with explicit error bounds that quantify the distance between the exact and approximate dynamics at each order, even in cases where the Floquet-Magnus series fails to converge. We apply the method to the semiclassical Rabi model and provide explicit error bounds for both the Bloch-Siegert Hamiltonian and its third-order refinement. Our analysis shows that, while the rotating-wave approximation more accurately captures the true dynamics than the Bloch-Siegert Hamiltonian in most regimes, the third-order approximation ultimately outperforms both.
The Floquet-Magnus expansion is a widely used tool to derive effective descriptions of time-periodic quantum systems by approximating their dynamics with a time-independent Hamiltonian. However, its standard formulation is, strictly speaking, restricted to bounded Hamiltonians. In this work, we extend its definition and analysis to a broad class of time-periodic unbounded Hamiltonians. Our approach is based on an a priori distinct nonperturbative framework for the construction of effective Hamiltonians, which we show to reproduce the Floquet-Magnus expansion. A particular strength of our framework is that it allows us to prove that the resulting effective dynamics approximates the original time evolution propagators to arbitrary order in the high-frequency limit without requiring convergence of the Floquet-Magnus expansion, a condition that is already highly restrictive even in the bounded setting. We illustrate the scope of the method on representative models: the quantum Rabi Hamiltonian in the interaction picture, and the periodically driven quantum harmonic oscillator.
We introduce a variational framework for approximating the time-evolution operator U^(t)\hat{U}(t)U^(t) within a physically motivated operator manifold, reformulating quantum dynamics as a tractable problem in operator space using stationary action principle. For periodically driven systems, the resulting approximate evolution operator directly yields an effective Floquet Hamiltonian, offering a non-perturbative alternative to conventional expansion-based methods. The framework is systematically improvable by enlarging the operator pool and naturally incorporates symmetries and physical constraints. When the operator manifold is chosen from the terms of a truncated Magnus expansion, the variational procedure effectively resums the Magnus series within the restricted space, significantly enhancing accuracy. We benchmark the approach on the driven Rabi model, the driven Lipkin-Meshkov-Glick model, and the one-dimensional driven Ising chain, yielding effective Floquet Hamiltonians that are systematically more accurate than low-order Magnus expansions, particularly in regimes where the latter converge poorly, and illustrating applicability to systems with exponentially large Hilbert spaces. Although we focus here on Floquet systems, the formalism applies equally to generic time-dependent Hamiltonians, providing a versatile tool for non-equilibrium quantum dynamics.
We investigate the Magnus expansion for a generic time-dependent two-level system under single-axis driving.By virtue of the su(2) Lie algebra, the expansion is decomposed into a commutator-free form. To illustrate the usefulness of the gained expression, we then revisit the Landau-Zener-Stückelberg-Majorana model, with a focus on non-adiabatic transitions as well as the Stokes phase. In addition, the semiclassical Rabi model is systematically treated by determining the Floquet quasienergy up to different orders. We demonstrate how to employ suitable picture transformations as well as on how to enforce the symmetry of the underlying model in order to guarantee convergence of the expansion as well as to achieve satisfactory agreement with the exact results. For both models that we studied it turns out that a third order approximation yields results that are in next to perfect agreement with exact analytical ones. Surprisingly, in the case of the semiclassical Rabi model, even the second order Magnus approximation in the adiabatic picture produces almost exact results for a large parameter range.
We revisit the theoretical description of the ultrastrong light-matter interaction in terms of exactly solvable effective Hamiltonians. A perturbative approach based on polaronic and spin-dependent squeezing transformations provides an effective Hamiltonian for the quantum Rabi model up to the second order in the expansion parameter. The model consistently includes both rotating and counter-rotating terms, going therefore beyond the rotating-wave approximation. Analytical and numerical results show that the proposed Hamiltonian performs better than the Bloch-Siegert model when calculating operator averages (e.g., the mean photon number and number of excitations). This improvement is due to a refined calculation of the dressed states within the present model. Regarding the frequency shift induced by the qubit-photon interaction, we find a different sign from the Bloch-Siegert value. This influences the structure of the eigenstates in a nontrivial way and ensures the correct calculation of the number of excitations associated with a given dressed state. As a consistency check, we show that the exactly solvable independent boson model is reproduced as a special limit case of the perturbative Hamiltonian.
We derive a Magnus expansion for a frequency chirped quantum two-level system. We obtain a time-independent effective Hamiltonian which generates a stroboscopic time evolution. At lowest order the according dynamics is identical to results from using a rotating wave approximation. We determine, furthermore, also the next higher-order corrections within our expansion scheme in correspondence to the Bloch-Siegert shifts for harmonically driven systems. Importantly, our scheme can be extended to more complicated systems, i.e., even many-body systems.
We investigate Krylov spread complexity for states evolving under time-dependent Hamiltonians. For periodically driven systems, we formulate the problem within Floquet theory and show how the Magnus expansion provides a systematic approximation when the Floquet Hamiltonian is not available in closed form. We then extend this framework beyond periodic driving and demonstrate that, in addition to the globally truncated Magnus expansion, a piecewise Magnus expansion provides a reliable method when the global expansion loses convergence or accuracy. Our results provide practical tools for analyzing complexity growth in a broad class of time-dependent quantum systems.